World Scientific partners with the major Abstract and Indexing Companies (A&I), and Search and Discovery partners to include our books in their indexes to increase their discoverability. This means more exposure and coverage for your books, which drive up their discovery, sales, readership and citation rate.
For maximum discoverability and exposure in institutional library systems, we share the metadata of our books with third-party discovery services such as Primo Central and EBSCO’s Discovery Service, both of which provide library discovery solutions.
World Scientific’s Open Access books are also distributed for hosting at DOAB and OAPEN.
Some of the partners whom we work directly with are listed below. Content metadata and sometimes full texts are shared with these third-parties in order to facilitate indexing. Each party sets their own evaluation criteria. The titles are either subjected to evaluation according to each third-parties’ set criteria, or if no evaluation is necessary, will be accepted, ingested and indexed directly.
- Scopus and Web of Science (BKCI for books, and CPCI for Proceedings). Published titles which fall under each database’s content scope are automatically pushed to them for their review.
- Disciplines specific A&I databases such as: RePEc (Economics titles), Astrophysics Data System (ADS), EconLit, SciFinder and DBLP (Computer Science titles). The last 2 databases evaluate titles before accepting them to be included and indexed in their databases.
- Open URL Link resolvers such as EBSCO A-Z, ExLibris, SFX
- E-resources management systems: 360 Resource Manager, Alma
- Mainstream search engines such as Google and Baidu
- Google Scholar (for papers published in Review Volumes), Baidu Scholar, CNKI.
- Portico: All our titles are archived in this dark archive, which provides archiving service for preserving electronic content for future access.
Below are some frequently-asked-questions about indexing under Web of Science and SCOPUS:
Q: How long does it take for a decision to be made/to see a book in an index?
Web of Science:
Evaluates books according to Web of Science requirements and editorial priorities. There is no average timeline to the evaluation process and there is no guarantee of indexing.
Scopus:
A dedicated team will manually review all suggested books one time per year, during the summer period.
Upon publication, all books are automatically put forward for Scopus review. The review process takes approximately 3-4 months, at which stage they determine if the book is in scope or if they need further information to continue the evaluation.
If a book is selected for inclusion, turnaround from title delivery to indexing is generally about 3 months. Please keep in mind that Scopus is a publisher-neutral organization i.e. it selects only a certain percentage of books from each publisher, in order to maintain publisher neutrality.
More information on Scopus and their selection criteria can be found here: https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/how-scopus-works/content/content-policy-and-selection
Q: What are the criteria for getting a book indexed?
Web of Science:
In order to be accepted, books must:
- be original research or review material
- intended for advanced graduate, postgraduate, or researcher audience
- include cited references;
- meet technical requirements (e.g., continuous pagination, front matter, TOC);
- the authors or editors must have established expertise and publication histories (determined through Web of Science);
- show cohesion and focus;
- be original content;
- will cover both book series and non-series books. Each book in each series will be evaluated individually.
- Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI), part of Web of Science Core Collection: All recently published proceedings will be sent for their evaluation
Scopus:
Covers scholarly books that represent fully-referenced, original research or literature reviews.
- Subject areas: Focus on Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities (A&H), but also Science, Technology & Medicine (STM)
- Book types: Monographs, edited volumes, major reference works, graduate level text books
- NOT in scope: Dissertations, undergraduate-level text books, atlases, yearbooks, biographies, popular science books, manuals, etc.
Scopus’ Book selection process is via a publisher-based approach (no individual book suggestions are considered). As the selection is evaluated on a per publisher basis, the Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB) is not involved in the evaluation of this content type. A dedicated group of highly educated individuals are responsible for the publisher selection process.
- Books will only be considered for evaluation if they meet the following minimum criteria. SCOPUS will only cover the forward flow of books from the year of selection going forward and not index previously published editions of the book.
- All books must be available in digital format (PDF or xml for example)
- All metadata must be captured in ONIX or MARC.
- All metadata must contain BIC or BISAC subject area codes.
- Full text of the book content must be in the English language.
- The book types in scope are: Monographs, edited volumes, major reference works, and graduate level text books.
Those book lists from publishers that meet the minimum criteria will be reviewed according to the following selection criteria such as:
- Size and subject area of the books list (subject area(s) Arts & Humanities and/or Social Sciences are preferred).
- Quality of published book content.
For more information, can refer to:
https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/how-scopus-works
https://www.elsevier.com/?a=69451
Q: How many books in total are indexed each year?
Web of Science: selects 10,000 books per year.
Q: How do we find out which books have been indexed at Web of Science?
A: Selected books are indexed in “batches” through the year according to WOS’s production schedules. The Master Book List (MBL) is updated once around January-February of each year: http://wokinfo.com/mbl/.
Institutions subscribing to Web of Science journal indices usually have access to Book Citation Index. Authors can check with their institutional librarians regarding access as it is a direct way to determine an item’s inclusion in Web of Science.
Q: Can we appeal if a book is rejected?
A: Neither Web of Science nor Scopus take appeal requests from the author or the publisher if a book is rejected.
